Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

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We talked of the manner in which the _loi de surete publique_ has beencarried out. And I mentioned 600 as the number of those who had sufferedunder it, as acknowledged to me by Blanchard in the beginning of March.

'It is much greater now,' said Lanjuinais. 'Berryer on his return fromItaly, a week ago, slept in Marseilles. He was informed that more than900 persons had passed through Marseilles, _deportes_ under the new lawto Algeria. They were of all classes: artisans and labourers mixed withmen of the higher and middle classes. To these must be added thosetransported to Cayenne, who were sent by way of Havre. As for the number_expulses_ and _internes_ there are no data.'

'In the Department of Var, a man was found guilty in 1848 of joining inone of the revolutionary movements of that time. His complete innocencewas soon proved; he was released, and has lived quietly on his littleestate ever since. He was arrested under the new law and ordered to be_deporte_ to Algeria. His friends, in fact all his neighbours,remonstrated, and sent to Paris the proof that the original convictionwas a mistake. "Qu'il aille tout de meme," was Espinasse's answer.

'In Calvados the Prefet, finding no one whom he could conscientiouslyarrest, took hold of one of the most respectable men in the department."If," he said, "I had arrested a man against whom there was plausibleground for suspicion, he might have been transported. This man _must_ bereleased."'

'Has he been released?' I asked.

'I have not heard,' was the answer. 'In all probability he has been.'

'In my department,' said Tocqueville, 'the _sous-prefet_, ordered by thePrefet to arrest somebody in the arrondissement, was in the sameperplexity as the Prefet of Calvados. "I can find no fit person," he saidto me. I believe that he reported the difficulty to the Prefet, and thatthe vacancy was supplied from some other arrondissement.

'What makes this frightful,' he added, 'is that we now know thatdeportation is merely a slow death. Scarcely any of the victims of 1851and 1852 are living.'

'I foretold that,' I said, 'at the time, as you will find if you look atmy article on Lamartine, published in the "Edinburgh Review."'[1]

[Footnote 1: See _Journals in France and Italy_.--ED.]

_April_ 20.--We talked of the political influence in France of the_hommes de lettres_.

'It began,' said Tocqueville, 'with the Restoration. Until that time wehad sometimes, though very rarely, statesmen who became writers, butnever writers who became statesmen,'

'You had _hommes de lettres_,' I said, 'in the early RevolutionaryAssemblies--Mirabeau for instance.'

'Mirabeau,' he answered, 'is your best example, for Mirabeau, until hebecame a statesman, lived by his pen. Still I should scarcely call a manof his high birth and great expectations _un homme de lettres_. Thatappellation seems to belong to a man who owes his position in early lifeto literature. Such a man is Thiers, or Guizot, as opposed to such men asGladstone, Lord John Russell, or Montalembert.'

_Wednesday, April_ 21.--I dined with D. and met, among several others,Admiral Matthieu the Imperial Hydrographer, and a general whose name Idid not catch. I talked to the general about the army.

'We are increasing it,' he said, 'but not very materially. We are rathergiving ourselves the means of a future rapid increase, than making animmediate augmentation. We are raising the number of men from 354,000 to392,400, in round numbers to 400,000; but the principal increase is inthe _cadres_, the officers attached to each battalion. We have increasedthem by more than one third. So that if a war should break out we caninstantly--that is to say in three months, increase our army to 600,000or even 700,000 men. Soldiers are never wanting in France, the difficultyalways is to find officers.'

'I hear,' I said, 'that you are making great improvements in yourartillery.'

'We are,' he answered. 'We are applying to it the principle of the Miniemusket, and we are improving the material. We hope to make our guns ascapable of resisting rapid and continued firing as well and as long asthe English and the Swedish guns, which are the best in Europe, can do.And we find that we can throw a ball on the Minie principle with equalprecision twice as far. This will double the force of all our batteries.'

'Are _you_,' he asked me, 'among those who have taken shares in theRussian railways?'

'No,' I said. 'They are the last that I wish to encourage.'

'Englishmen or Frenchmen,' he answered, 'who help Russia to makerailways, put me in mind of the Dutch who sold powder to their besiegers.

'The thinness of her population--that is, the vast space over which it isscattered--alone prevents Russia from being the mistress of Europe. Ifher 64,000,000 were as concentrated as our 34,000,000 are, she would beirresistible. She loses always far more men in marching than infighting.'

'The events of the war,' I said, 'lead me to believe that the goodness ofthe Russian soldier is exaggerated. They were always beaten, often byinferior numbers.'

'In the first place,' he answered, 'those who were beaten at Sebastopolwere not the best Russian soldiers. They were short small men, generallydrawn from the neighbouring provinces. The Russian Imperial Guards andthe Russian Army in Poland are far superior to any that we encountered inthe Crimea. In the second place, they were ill commanded. Theimprovements of weapons, of science and of discipline, have raised theprivates of all the great military nations to about the same level.Success now depends on numbers and on generalship. With railways Russiawill be able to bring quickly a preponderating force to any point on herfrontier. Her officers are already good, and for money she can import thebest generals; indeed, I do not see why she should not breed them. Russiais civilised enough to produce men of the highest military qualities.'

I asked Admiral Matthieu about the naval preparations of France.

'The "Moniteur,"' I said, 'denies that you are making any.'

'The "Moniteur,"' he answered, 'does not tell the truth. We areaugmenting largely, both the number and the efficacy of our fleet.

'Four years ago, at the beginning of the Russian war, we resolved tobuild a steam fleet of 150 steam ships of different sizes for fighting,and 74 steam ships for the transfer service, and to carry fuel andstores. Though we set about this in the beginning, as we thought, of along war, we have not allowed the peace to interrupt it. We are devotingto it sixty-five millions a year (2,600,000_l_.) of which from fifteen toseventeen millions are employed every year in building new ships, andfrom forty to forty-two in adding steam power to the old ones. We hope tofinish this great work in fourteen years.'

'What,' I asked, 'is the amount of your present fleet of steamers?'

'We have thirty-three screws,' he answered, 'fifty-seven paddles, andsixty-two sailing vessels in commission, and seventy-three, mostlysteamers, _en reserve_, as you would say, in ordinary.'

'Manned by how many men?' I asked.

'By twenty-five thousand sailors,' he answered, 'and eleven thousandmarines. But our _inscription maritime_ would give us in a few months orless one hundred thousand more. Since the times of Louis XVI. the FrenchNavy has never been so formidable, positively or relatively.'

'How,' I asked, 'has your "Napoleon" succeeded?'

'Admirably,' he answered. 'I have not seen the "Wellington," but she is amuch finer ship than the Agamemnon. Her speed is wonderful. A month agoshe left Toulon at seven in the morning, and reached Ajaccio by four inthe evening. But the great improvement is in our men. Napoleon knewnothing and cared nothing about sailors. He took no care about theirtraining, and often wasted them in land operations, for which landsmenwould have done as well.

'In 1814 he left Toulon absolutely unguarded, and sent all the sailors tojoin Augereau. You might have walked into it.

'In 1810 or 1811 I was on board a French corvette which fought an actionwith an English vessel, the "Lively." We passed three times under herstern, and raked her each time. We ought to have cleared her decks. Not ashot touched her. The other day at Cherbourg I saw a broadside fired at afloating mark three cables off, the usual distance at which ships engage.Ten balls hit it, and we could see that all the others passed near enoughto shake it by their wind.

'A ship of eighty guns has now forty _canonniers_ and forty _maitres depieces_. All practical artillerymen, and even the able seamen, can pointa gun. Nelson's manoeuvre of breaking the line could not be used againsta French fleet, such as a French fleet is now. The leading ships would bedestroyed one after another, by the concentrated fire. Formerly ourofficers dreaded a maritime war. They knew that defeat awaited them,possibly death. Now they are confident, and eager to try their hands.'

In the evening L. took me into a corner, and we had a long conversation.

He had been reading my 'Athens Journal.'

'What struck me,' he said, 'in every page of it, was the resemblance ofKing Otho to Louis Napoleon.'

'I see the resemblance,' I answered, 'but it is the resemblance of adwarf to a giant.'

'No,' he replied. 'Of a man five feet seven inches high to one five feeteleven inches. There are not more than four inches between them. There isthe same cunning, the same coldness, the same vindictiveness, the samesilence, the same perseverance, the same unscrupulousness, the sameselfishness, the same anxiety to appear to do everything that is done,and above all, the same determination to destroy, or to seduce bycorruption or by violence, every man and every institution favourable toliberty, independence, or self-government. In one respect Otho had themore difficult task. He found himself, in 1843, subject to a Constitutioncarefully framed under the advice of England for the express purpose ofcontrolling him. He did not attempt to get rid of it by a _coup d'etat_,or even to alter it, but cunningly and skilfully perverted it into aninstrument of despotism. Louis Napoleon destroyed the Constitution whichhe found, and made a new one, copied from that which had been graduallyelaborated by his uncle, which as a restraint is intentionally powerlessand fraudulent.

'A man,' he continued, 'may acquire influence either by possessing in ahigher degree the qualities which belong to his country and to his time,or by possessing those in which they are deficient.

'Wellington is an example of this first sort. His excellences were thoseof an Englishman carried almost to perfection.

'Louis Napoleon belongs to the second. If his merits had been impetuouscourage, rapidity of ideas, quickness of decision, frankness, versatilityand resource, he would have been surrounded by his equals or hissuperiors. He predominated over those with whom he came in contactbecause he differed from them. Because he was calm, slow, reserved,silent, and persevering. Because he is a Dutchman, not a Frenchman.'

'He seems,' I said, 'to have lost his calmness.'

'Yes,' answered L. 'But under what a shock! And observe that though thegreatest risk was encountered by _him_, the terror was greatest among his_entourage_. I do not believe that if he had been left to himself hewould have lost his prudence or his self-possession. He did not for thefirst day. Passions are contagious. Everyone who approached him wasagitated by terror and anger. His intrepidity and self-reliance, great asthey are, were disturbed by the hubbub all round him. His great defectsare three. First, his habit of self-contemplation. He belongs to the menwhom the Germans call subjective, whose eye is always turned inwardly;who think only of themselves, of their own character, and of their ownfortunes. Secondly, his jealousy of able men. He wishes to be what youcalled him, a giant, and as Nature has not made him positively tall, hetries to be comparatively so, by surrounding himself with dwarfs. Histhird defect is the disproportion of his wishes to his means. His desiresare enormous. No power, no wealth, no expenditure would satisfy them.Even if he had his uncle's genius and his uncle's indefatigability, hewould sink, as his uncle did, under the exorbitance of his attempts. Ashe is not a man of genius, or even a man of remarkable ability, as he isignorant, uninventive and idle, you will see him flounder and fall fromone failure to another.

'During the three years that Drouyn de L'Huys was his minister he wasintent on home affairs--on his marriage, on the Louvre, on the artillery,on his _bonnes fortunes_, and on the new delights of unboundedexpenditure. He left foreign affairs altogether to his minister. WhenDrouyn de L'Huys left him, the road before him was plain--he had only tocarry on the war. But when the war was over, the road ended; neitherhe nor Walewski nor any of his _entourage_ know anything of the countryin which they are travelling. You see them wandering at hazard. Sometimestrying to find their way to Russia, sometimes to England. Making a treatywith Austria, then attempting to injure her, and failing; attempting toinjure Turkey, and failing; bullying Naples, and failing; threateningSwitzerland, threatening Belgium, and at last demanding from England anAlien Bill, which they ought to know to be incompatible with the laws andhateful to the feelings of the people.

'He is not satisfied with seeing the country prosperous and respectedabroad. He wants to dazzle. His policy, domestic and foreign, is a policyof vanity and ostentation--motives which mislead everyone both in privateand in public life.

'His great moral merits are kindness and sympathy. He is a faithfulattached friend, and wishes to serve all who come near him.

'His greatest moral fault is his ignorance of the difference betweenright and wrong; perhaps his natural insensibility to it, his want of theorgans by which that difference is perceived--a defect which he inheritsfrom his uncle.'

'The uncle,' I said, 'had at least one moral sense--he could understandthe difference between pecuniary honesty and dishonesty, a differencewhich this man seems not to see, or not to value.'

'I agree with you,' said L. 'He cannot value it, or he would not lookcomplacently on the peculation which surrounds him. Every six months somemagnificent hotel rises in the Champs Elysees, built by a man who hadnothing, and has been a minister for a year or two.'

On my return I found Tocqueville with the ladies. I gave him an outlineof what L. had said.

'No one,' he said, 'knows Louis Napoleon better than L.'

'My opportunities of judging him have been much fewer, but as far as theyhave gone, they lead to the same conclusions. L. perhaps has not dweltenough on his indolence. Probably as he grows older, and the effects ofhis early habits tell on him, it increases. I am told that it isdifficult to make him attend to business, that he prolongs audiencesapparently to kill time.

'One of the few of my acquaintances who go near him, was detained by himfor an hour to answer questions about the members of the _Corpslegislatif_. Louis Napoleon inquired about their families, theirfortunes, their previous histories. Nothing about their personalqualities. These are things that do not interest him. He supposes thatmen differ only in externals. "That the _fond_ is the same in everyone."'

_April 26_.--Tocqueville spent the evening with us.

We talked of Novels.

'I read none,' he said, 'that end ill. Why should one voluntarily subjectoneself to painful emotions? To emotions created by an imaginary causeand therefore impelling you to no action. I like vivid emotions, but Iseek them in real life, in society, in travelling, in business, but aboveall in political business. There is no happiness comparable to politicalsuccess, when your own excitement is justified by the magnitude of thequestions at issue, and is doubled and redoubled by the sympathy of yoursupporters. Having enjoyed that, I am ashamed of being excited by thevisionary sorrows of heroes and heroines.

'I had a friend,' he continued, 'a Benedictine, who is now ninety-seven.He was, therefore, about thirteen when Louis XVI. began to reign. He is aman of talents and knowledge, has always lived in the world, has attendedto all that he has seen and heard, and is still unimpaired in mind, andso strong in body that when I leave him he goes down to embrace me, afterthe fashion of the eighteenth century, at the bottom of his staircase.'

'And what effect,' I asked, 'has the contemplation of seventy years ofrevolution produced in him? Does he look back, like Talleyrand, to the_ancien regime_ as a golden age?'

'He admits,' said Tocqueville, 'the material superiority of our own age,but he believes that, intellectually and morally, we are far inferior toour grandfathers. And I agree with him. Those seventy years of revolutionhave destroyed our courage, our hopefulness, our self-reliance, ourpublic spirit, and, as respects by far the majority of the higherclasses, our passions, except the vulgarest and most selfish ones--vanityand covetousness. Even ambition seems extinct. The men who seek power,seek it not for itself, not as the means of doing good to their country,but as a means of getting money and flatterers.

'It is remarkable,' he continued, 'that women whose influence isgenerally greatest under despotisms, have none now. They have lost it,partly in consequence of the gross vulgarity of our dominant passions,and partly from their own nullity. They are like London houses, all builtand furnished on exactly the same model, and that a most uninterestingone. Whether a girl is bred up at home or in a convent, she has the samemasters, gets a smattering of the same accomplishments, reads the samedull books, and contributes to society the same little contingent ofsuperficial information.

'Till the orange flowers of her wedding chaplet are withered,' heanswered. 'In three months she goes to the _messe d'une heure_.'

'What is the "messe d'une heure?"' I asked.

'A priest,' he answered, 'must celebrate Mass fasting; and in strictnessought to do so before noon. But to accommodate fashionable ladies whocannot rise by noon, priests are found who will starve all the morning,and say Mass in the afternoon. It is an irregular proceeding, thoughwinked at by the ecclesiastical authorities. Still to attend it is ratherdiscreditable; it is a middle term between the highly meritoriouspractice of going to early Mass, and the scandalous one of never going atall.'

'What was the education,' I asked, 'of women under the _ancien regime_?'

'The convent,' he answered.

'It must have been better,' I said, 'than the present education, sincethe women of that time were superior to ours.'

'It was so far better,' he answered, 'that it did no harm. A girl at thattime was taught nothing. She came from the convent a sheet of whitepaper. _Now_ her mind is a paper scribbled over with trash. The women ofthat time were thrown into a world far superior to ours, and with thesagacity, curiosity, and flexibility of French women, caught knowledgeand tact and expression from the men.

'I knew well,' he continued, 'Madame Recamier. Few traces of her formerbeauty then remained, but we were all her lovers and her slaves. Thetalent, labour, and skill which she wasted in her _salon_, would havegained and governed an empire. She was virtuous, if it be virtuous topersuade every one of a dozen men that you wish to favour him, thoughsome circumstance always occurs to prevent your doing so. Every friendthought himself preferred. She governed us by little distinctions, byletting one man come five minutes before the others, or stay five minutesafter. Just as Louis XIV. raised one courtier to the seventh heaven bygiving him the _bougeoir_, and another by leaning on his arm, or takinghis shirt from him.

'She said little, but knew what each man's _fort_ was, and placed fromtime to time a _mot_ which led him to it. If anything were peculiarlywell said, her face brightened. You saw that her attention was alwaysactive and always intelligent.

'And yet I doubt whether she really enjoyed conversation. _Tenir salon_was to her a game, which she played well, and almost always successfully,but she must sometimes have been exhausted by the effort. Her _salon_ wasperhaps pleasanter to us than it was to herself.

'One of the last,' he continued, 'of that class of potentates was theDuchesse de Dino. Her early married life was active and brilliant, butnot intellectually. It was not till about forty, when she had exhaustedother excitements, that she took to _bel esprit._ But she performed herpart as if she had been bred to it.'

This was our last conversation. I left Paris the next day, and we nevermet again.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Tocqueville, June 30, 1858.

I must complain, a little of your silence, my dear Senior. I hear thatbefore you left Paris you suffered a great deal from your throat. Is ittrue, or have you recovered?

I have not either much to boast of on the score of health since weparted. The illness which I had in Paris became still worse, and when Igot a little better in that way I had a violent bronchial attack. I evenbegan to spit blood, which had not happened to me for many years, and Iam still almost reduced to silence. Still I am beginning to mend, and Ihope, please God, to be able to _speak_ to my friends when they visit me.

You are aware that I wished to induce my wife to accompany me to theSouth; but the length of the journey, the difficulties of transport, theheat, and indeed the state of my health, were reasons which she broughtforward with so much force that we have remained here, and shall notleave till the end of September. We still hope that you and Miss Seniorwill join us the first week in that month. We shall be very happy to haveyou both with us. This is no compliment ... I hope soon to be able toenjoy more frequent communication with my English friends. A steamboat isabout to run from Cherbourg to the coast of England. We shall then beable to visit each other as neighbours (_voisiner_).

Between ourselves, I do not think that the events in England during thelast six months are of a nature to raise the reputation of ParliamentaryGovernment in the rest of the world. _A bientot!_

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Kensington, July 5, 1858.

My dear Tocqueville,--If I had written to you three days ago, I shouldhave talked of the pleasure which my daughter and I expected from ourvisit to Tocqueville. But our plans are changed. Edward Ellice is goingto pay a last visit to America, and has begged me to accompany him. He isa great proprietor in both America and Canada--knows everybody in bothcountries, and is besides a most able and interesting companion. So Ihave accepted the proposal, and start on the 30th of this month forBoston. We shall return in the beginning of November.

I am _very_ sorry to lose the visit to Normandy, but I trust that it isonly deferred.

We are grieved to hear that neither you nor Madame de Tocqueville are aswell as your friends could wish you to be.

My _grippe_, after lasting for three months, has gradually subsided, andI look to the voyage to America as a cure for all remains of it.

I have most punctually carried your remembrances to all the personshonoured by being inscribed on your card.

Though I have often seen Gladstone, it has always been among many otherpersons, and he has been so full of talk, that I have never been able toallude to your subject. I mentioned it to Mrs. Gladstone on Saturdaylast: she said that there was not a person in all France whom her husbandso much admired and venerated as you--therefore, if there was anyappearance of neglect, it could have arisen only from hurry or mistake. Ishall see him again on Thursday, when we are going all together to arehearsal of Ristori's, and I will talk to him: we shall there be quiet.

Things here are in a very odd state. The Government is supported by theTories because it calls itself Tory, and by the Whigs and Radicalsbecause it obeys them. On such terms it may last for an indefinite time.

Kindest regards from us all to you both.

Ever yours,

N.W. SENIOR.

9 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, August 2, 1858.

My dear Tocqueville,--I ought, as you know, to be on the Atlantic by thistime; but I was attacked, ten days ago, with lumbar neuralgia, which theyare trying, literally, to rub away. If I am quite well on the 13th, Ishall go on the 14th to America.

I was attacked at Sir John Boileau's, where I spent some days with theGuizots, Mrs. Austin, and Stanley and Lord John Russell.

Guizot is in excellent spirits, and, what is rare in an ex-premier,dwells more on the present and the future than on the past. Mrs. Austinis placid and discursive.

Lord John seems to me well pleased with the present state ofaffairs--which he thinks, I believe with reason, will bring him back topower. He thinks that Malmesbury and Disraeli are doing well, and praisesmuch the subordinates of the Government. Considering that no one believesLord Derby to be wise, or Disraeli to be either wise or honest, it ismarvellous that they get on as well as they do. The man who has risenmost is Lord Stanley, and, as he has the inestimable advantage of youth,I believe him to be predestined to influence our fortunes long.

The world, I think, is gradually coming over to an opinion, which, when Imaintained it thirty years ago, was treated as a ridiculous paradox--thatIndia is and always has been a great misfortune to us; and, that if itwere possible to get quit of it, we should be richer and stronger.

But it is clear that we are to keep it, at least for my life.

Kindest regards from us all to you and Madame de Tocqueville.

Ever yours,

N.W. SENIOR.

Tocqueville, August 21, 1858.

My dear Senior,--I hear indirectly that you are extremely ill. Yourletter told me only that you were suffering from neuralgia which youhoped to be rid of in a few days, but Mrs. Grote informs me that themalady continues and has even assumed a more serious character.

If you could write or dictate a few lines to me, you would please memuch.

I am inconsolable for the failure of your American journey. I expectedthe most curious results from it I hoped that your journal would enableme once more to understand the present state of a country which hasso changed since I saw it that I feel that I now know nothing of it. Whata blessing, however, that you had not started! What would have become ofyou if the painful attack from which you are suffering had seized you2,000 miles away from home, and in the midst of that agitated societywhere no one has time to be ill or to think of those who are ill? It mustbe owned that Fortune has favoured you by sending you this illness justat the moment of your departure instead of ten days later.

I have been much interested by your visit to Sir John Boileau. You sawthere M. Guizot in one of his best lights. The energy with which hestands up under the pressure of age and of ill-fortune, and is not onlyresigned in his new situation, but as vigorous, as animated, and ascheerful as ever, shows a character admirably tempered and a pride whichnothing will bend.

I do not so well understand the cheerfulness of Lord John Russell. Forthe spectacle now exhibited by England, in which a party finds nodifficulty in maintaining itself in power by carrying into practice ideaswhich it has always opposed, and by relying for support on its naturalenemies, is not of a nature to raise the reputation of your institutions,or of your public men. I should have a great deal more to say to you onthis and other subjects if I were not afraid of tiring you. I leave off,therefore, by assuring you that we are longing to hear of your recovery.Remembrances, &c.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Cannes, December 12, 1858.

I wish, my dear friend, to reassure you myself on the false reports whichhave been spread regarding my health. Far from finding myself worse thanwhen we arrived, I am already much better.

I am just now an invalid who takes his daily walks of two hours in themountains after eating an excellent breakfast. I am not, however, well.If I were I should not long remain a citizen of Cannes.

I have almost renounced the use of speech, and consequently the societyof human beings; which is all the more sad as my wife, my sole companion,is herself very unwell, not dangerously, but enough to make meanxious. When I say my sole companion, I am wrong, for my eldest brotherhas had the kindness to shut himself up with us for a month.

Adieu, dear Senior. A thousand kind remembrances from us to all yourparty.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Cannes, March 15, 1859.

You say, my dear Senior, in the letter which I have just received, that Ilike to hear from my friends, not to write to them. It is true that Idelight in the letters of my friends, especially of my English friends;but it is a calumny to say that I do not like to answer them. It is truethat I am in your debt: one great cause is, that a man who lives atCannes knows nothing of what is passing. My solitary confinement, whichis bad enough in every way, makes me a bad correspondent, by depressingmy spirits and rendering every exertion painful.

Mrs. Grote, in a very kind and interesting letter, which I received fromher yesterday, says, that Lord Brougham, on his late arrival in London,gave a lamentable description of my health. If he confined himself toJanuary, he was right. It is impossible to exaggerate my sufferingsduring that month. But, since that time, all has changed, as if from dayto night, or rather from night to day. To talk now of what I was inJanuary is like making a speech about the Spanish marriages.

I am grieved to find that you have suffered so much this year frombronchitis. I fear that your larynx can scarcely endure an Englishwinter. But it is very hard to be obliged to expatriate oneself everyyear. I fear, however, that such must be my fate for some winters tocome, and the pain with which I anticipate it makes me sympathise moreacutely with you.

We know not, as yet, whether we are to have peace or war. Whichever itbe, a mortal blow has struck the popularity of Louis Napoleon. Whatmaintained him was the belief that he was the protector of our materialinterests: interests to which we now sacrifice all others. The events ofthe last month show, with the utmost vividness, that these very interestsmay be endangered by the arbitrary and irrational will of a despot. Thefeelings, therefore, which were his real support are now bitterly hostileto him.

I feel, in short, that a considerable change in our Government isapproaching.

Even our poor _Corps legislatif_, a week ago, refused to take intoconsideration the Budget, until it was informed whether it were to be awar budget or a peace budget. Great was the fury of those who representedthe Government. They exclaimed that the Chamber misapprehended itsjurisdiction, and that it had nothing to do with political questions. TheChamber, however, or rather its committee on the Budget, held its ground,and extorted from the Government some explanations.

Adieu, my dear Senior. Say everything that is kind to the Grotes, theReeves, the Lewises--in short, to all our common friends, and believe inthe sincerity of my friendship.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

[This was M. de Tocqueville's last letter to Mr. Senior. He died on the16th of April.--ED.]

Hotel Westminster, Rue de la Paix, April 25, 1859.

My dear Madame de Tocqueville,--I was in the country, and it was onlylast Friday, as I was passing through London on my way to Paris, that Iheard of the irreparable loss that we, indeed that France and Europe,have suffered.

It cannot alleviate your distress to be told how universal and deep isthe sympathy with it--quite as much in England as in France.

It has thrown a gloom over society, not only over that portion which hadthe happiness and the honour of intimacy with M.A. de Tocqueville, buteven of his acquaintances, and of those too whose acquaintance was onlywith his works.

I have, as you know, been for about a year, the depositary of a largepacket confided to me by M. de Tocqueville last spring. About six monthsago he begged me to return it to him, in Paris, when I had a safeopportunity. No such opportunity offered itself, so that the packetremains in my library awaiting your orders.

Since I began this letter I have been informed by M. de Corcelle that youare likely to be soon in Paris. I shall not venture to send it by thepost, lest it should cross you on the road.

I shall anxiously inquire as to your arrival, in the hope that you willallow one who most sincerely loved and admired your husband, morally andintellectually, to see you as soon as you feel yourself equal to it.

Believe me, my dear Madame de Tocqueville, with the truest sympathy,yours most truly,

NASSAU W. SENIOR.

[Mr. Senior continued an active correspondence with Madame deTocqueville, and we saw her whenever we were in Paris. Our long-promisedvisit to Tocqueville took place in 1861.--ED.]

JOURNAL.

_Tocqueville, Sunday, August_ 11, 1861.--We left Paris on Saturdayevening, got to Valognes by the Cherbourg railway by six the nextmorning, and were furnished there with a good carriage and horses, whichtook us, and our servants and luggage, in three hours to Tocqueville.

Valognes has been immortalised by Le Sage in Turcaret. It is a town ofabout 6,000 inhabitants, built of granite, and therefore little alteredfrom what it was 200 years ago. Over many of the doors are the armorialbearings of the provincial nobility who made it a small winter capital:the practice is not wholly extinct. I asked who was the inhabitant of animposing old house. 'M. de Neridoze,' answered our landlady, 'd'unetres-haute noblesse.' I went over one in which Madame de Tocquevillethinks of passing the winter. It is of two stories. The ground floorgiven up to kitchen, laundry, and damp-looking servants' rooms; the firstfloor in this form:--

[Illustration:]

Bedroom. Door Stairs Bedroom.

Bedroom. Drawing-room. Dining-room. Hall. Bedroom.

The longer side looks into the street, the shorter, which is to be Madamede Tocqueville's bedroom, into a small garden.

_August_ 11.--At Tocqueville we find M. and Madame de Beaumont, theirsecond son--a charming boy of ten years old, and Ampere.

It is eleven years since I was here. Nothing has been done to theinterior of the house. This is about the plan of ground floor.

[Illustration:]

Offices Tower staircase Offices.

Drawing-room. Billiard-room. Dining-room. Hall. Tower

The first floor corresponds to the ground floor, except that on thewestern sides a passage runs, into which the library, which is over thedrawing-room, and the bedrooms open. The second consists of garrets. Myroom is on the first floor of the eastern tower, with deep windowslooking south and east. The room dedicated by Tocqueville to Ampere isabove me. Creepers in great luxuriance cover the walls up to the firstfloor windows. The little park consists of from thirty to forty acres,well wooded and traversed by an avenue in this form, leading from theroad to the front of the house.

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To the west the ground rises to a wild common commanding the sea, thelighthouses of Gatteville, Barfleur, La Hogue, and a green plain coveredwith woods and hedgerow trees, and studded with church towers and spiresof the picturesque forms of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenthcenturies. It has no grand features, except the sea and the rocky coastof the Cherbourg peninsula, but it is full of variety and beauty. I canunderstand Tocqueville's delight in the house and in the country. Theweather is perfect; the thermometer in my bedroom, the walls of which areabout six feet thick, is 71 deg., in the sun it is 80 deg.; but there is a strongbreeze.

_August 12th._--Madame de Beaumont, my daughter, and Ampere drove, andBeaumont and I walked, to the coast about three miles and a half off. Ourroad ran through the gay wooded plain which I have described.

We talked of Italian affairs.

'Up to the annexation of Tuscany,' said Beaumont, 'I fully approve of allthat has been done. Parma, Modena, and Tuscany were eager to joinPiedmont. During the anxious interval of six months, while the decisionof Louis Napoleon was doubtful, the conduct of the Tuscans was above allpraise. Perhaps the general wish of the people of Romagna justified thePiedmontese in seizing it. Though there the difficult question as to theexpediency of stripping the Pope of his temporal power rises.

'Perhaps, too, the facility with which Sicily submitted was ajustification. But I cannot pardon the seizure of Naples. It is clear tome that if the Neapolitans had been left to themselves they would havedriven out the Garibaldians. Garibaldi himself felt this: nothing but aconviction of its necessity would have induced him to call for theassistance of the Piedmontese. I do not believe that in defiance of allinternational law-indeed in defiance of all internationalmorality--Cavour would have given that assistance if the public opinionof Piedmont had allowed him to refuse it. And what is the consequence? Acivil war which is laying waste the country. The Piedmontese call theiradversaries brigands. There are without doubt among them men whose motiveis plunder, but the great majority are in arms in defence of theindependence of their country. They are no more brigands now than theywere when they resisted King Joseph. The Piedmontese are as muchforeigners to them as the French were: as much hated and as lawfullyresisted. They may be conquered, they probably will be conquered. Anignorant corrupt population, inhabiting a small country, unsupported byits higher classes--its fleet, its fortresses, and all the machinery ofits government, in the hands of its enemies--cannot permanently resist;but the war will be atrocious, and the more cruel on the part of Piedmontbecause it is unjust.'

'You admit,' I said, 'that the higher classes side with Piedmont?'

'I admit that,' he answered; 'but you must recollect how few they are innumber, and how small is the influence which they exercise. In general, Idetest universal suffrage, I detest democracy and everything belonging toit, but if it were possible to obtain honestly and truly the opinion ofthe people, I would ask it and obey it. I believe that it would be betterto allow the Neapolitans, ignorant and debased as they are, to choosetheir own sovereign and their own form of government, than to let them beforced by years of violence to become the unwilling subjects ofPiedmont.'

'Do you believe,' I said, 'that it is possible to obtain throughuniversal suffrage the honest and true opinion of a people?'

'Not,' he answered, 'if the Government interferes. I believe that inSavoy not one person in fifty was in favour of annexation to France. Butthis is an extreme case.

'The Bourbons are deservedly hated and despised by the Neapolitans, thePiedmontese are not despised, but are hated still more intensely. Thereis no native royal stock. The people are obviously unfit for a Republic.It would be as well, I think, to let them select a King as to impose oneon them. The King whom Piedmont, without a shadow of right, is imposingon them is the one whom they most detest.'

'If I go to Rome,' I asked, 'in the winter, whom shall I find there?'

'I think,' he answered, 'that it will be the Piedmontese. The presentstate of things is full of personal danger to Louis Napoleon. As hispolicy is purely selfish, he will, at any sacrifice, put an end to it.That sacrifice may be the unity of Catholicism. The Pope, no longer asovereign, will be under the influence of the Government in whoseterritory he resides, and the other Catholic Powers may follow theexample of Greece and of Russia, and create each an independent SpiritualGovernment. It would be a new excitement for _Celui-ci_ to make himselfHead of the Church.'

'Assassinations,' I said, 'even when successful have seldom producedimportant and permanent effects, but Orsini's failure has influenced andis influencing the destinies of Europe.'

'If I were an Italian liberal,' said Beaumont, 'I would erect a statue tohim. The policy and almost the disposition of Louis Napoleon have beenchanged by the _attentat_. He has become as timid as he once wasintrepid. He began by courting the Pope and the clergy. He despised theFrench assassins, who were few in number and unconnected, and who hadproved their unskilfulness on Louis Philippe; but Orsini showed him thathe had to elect between the Pope and the Austrians on one side, and theCarbonari on the other. He has chosen the alliance of the Carbonari. Hehas made himself their tool, and will continue to do so.

'They are the only enemies whom he fears, at least for the present.

'France is absolutely passive. The uneducated masses from whom he holdshis power are utterly indifferent to liberty, and he has too much senseto irritate them by wanton oppression. They do not know that he isdegrading the French character, they do not even feel that he is wastingthe capital of France, they do not know that he is adding twenty millionsevery year to the national debt. They think of his loans merely asinvestments, and the more profligately extravagant are the terms and theamount, the better they like them.'

'That was my opinion,' he answered; 'indeed, it was the opinion ofeverybody. I thought the Duc de Broglie desponding when he gave it threeyears. We none of us believed that the love of liberty was dead inFrance.'

'It is not,' I said, 'dead, for among the higher classes it still lives,and among the lower it never existed.'

'Perhaps,' he answered, 'our great mistakes were that we miscalculatedthe courage of the educated classes, and the degree in which universalsuffrage would throw power into the hands of the uneducated. Not a humanbeing in my commune reads a newspaper or indeed reads anything: yet itcontains 300 electors. In the towns there is some knowledge and somepolitical feeling, but for political purposes they are carefully swampedby being joined to uneducated agricultural districts.

'Still I think I might enter the _Corps legislatif_ for our capital LeMans. Perhaps at a general election twenty liberals might come in. Butwhat good could they do? The opposition in the last session strengthenedLouis Napoleon. It gave him the prestige of liberality and success.'

'You think him, then,' I said, 'safe for the rest of his life?'

'Nothing,' he answered, 'is safe in France, and the thing most unsafe isa Government. Our caprices are as violent as they are sudden. Theyresemble those of a half-tamed beast of prey, which licks its keeper'shand to-day, and may tear him to-morrow. But if his life be not so longas to enable the fruits of his follies to show themselves in theirnatural consequences--unsuccessful war, or defeated diplomacy, orbankruptcy, or heavily increased taxation--he may die in the Tuileries.

'But I infer from his conduct that he thinks an insurrection against histyranny possible, and that he is preparing to meet it by a popular war--that is to say, by a war with England.

'I found my opinion not so much on the enormous maritime preparations, ason the long-continued systematic attempts to raise against England ourold national enmity. All the provincial papers are in the hands of theGovernment. The constantly recurring topic of every one of them is, theperfidy and the malignity of England. She is described as opposing allour diplomacy, as resisting all our aggrandisement, as snarling andgrowling at our acquisition of Savoy, as threatening us if we acceptSardinia, as trying to drive the Pope from Rome because we protect him,as trying to separate the Danubian provinces because we wish to unitethem, as preventing the Suez Canal because we proposed it--in short, onevery occasion and in every part of the world as putting herself in ourway. To these complaints, which are not without foundation, are addedothers of which our ignorant people do not see the absurdity. They aretold that the enormous conscription, and the great naval expenditure, arerendered necessary by the aggressive armaments of England. That you arepreparing to lay waste all our coasts, to burn our arsenals, to subsidiseagainst us a new Coalition, and perhaps lead its armies again to Paris.

'The Emperor's moderation, his love of England, and his love of peace,are said to be the only obstacles to, a violent rupture. But they areprepared for these obstacles at length giving way. "The Emperor," theyare told, "is getting tired of his insolent, and hostile, and quarrelsomeallies. He is getting tired of a peace which is more expensive than awar. Some day the cup will flow over. 'Il en finira avec eux,' willdictate a peace in London, will free the oppressed Irish nationality,will make England pay the expense of the war, and then having conqueredthe only enemy that France can fear, will let her enjoy, for the firsttime, real peace, a reduced conscription, and low taxation."

'Such is the language of all the provincial papers and of all theprovincial authorities, and it has its effect. There never was a timewhen a war with England would be so popular. He does not wish for one, heknows that it would be extremely dangerous, but he is accustomed to playfor great stakes, and if submitting to any loss of his popularity, or toany limitation of his power is the alternative, he will run the risk. Hekeeps it, as his last card, in reserve, to be played only in extremity,but to be ready when that extremity has arrived.'

_Tuesday, August_ 13.--We drove to La Prenelle, a church at the point ofa high table-land running from Tocqueville towards the bay of La Hogue,and commanding nearly all the Cherbourg peninsula. On three sides of uswas the sea, separated from us by a wooded, well-inhabited plain, whosechurches rose among the trees, and containing the towns and loftylighthouses of Gatteville, Barfleur, Vast, and La Hogue. We sat on thepoint from whence James II. saw the battle of La Hogue, and admired thecourage of his English rebels.

Ampere has spent much of his life in Rome, and is engaged on a work inwhich its history is to be illustrated by its monuments.

We talked of the Roman people.

'Nothing,' said Ampere, 'can be more degraded than the higher classes.With the exception of Antonelli, who is charming, full of knowledge,intelligence, and grace, and of the Duke of Sermoneta, who is almostequally distinguished, there is scarcely a noble of my acquaintance whohas any merits, moral or intellectual.

'They are surrounded by the finest ancient and modern art, and carenothing for it. The eminent men of every country visit Rome--the Romansavoid them for they have nothing to talk to them about.

'Politics are of course unsafe, literature they have none. They neverread. A cardinal told me something which I doubted, and I asked him wherehe had found it. "In certi libri," he answered.

'Another, who has a fine old library, begged me to use it. "You will dothe room good," he said. "No one has been there for years." Even scandaland gossip must be avoided under an Ecclesiastical Government.

'They never ride, they never shoot, they never visit their estates, theygive no parties; if it were not for the theatre and for their lawsuitsthey would sink into vegetable life.'

'Sermoneta,' I said, 'told me that many of his lawsuits were hereditary,and would probably descend to his son.'

'If Sermoneta,' said Ampere, 'with his positive intelligence and hiscomparative vigour, cannot get through them, what is to be expected fromothers? They have, however, one merit, one point of contact with the restof the world--their hatred of their Government. They seem to perceive,not clearly, for they perceive nothing clearly, but they dimly see, thatthe want of liberty is a still greater misfortune to the higher classesthan to the lower.

'But the people are a fine race. Well led they will make excellentsoldiers. They have the cruelty of their ancestors, perhaps I ought tosay of their predecessors, but they have also their courage.'

'They showed,' said Beaumont, 'courage in the defence of Rome, butcourage behind walls is the commonest of all courages. No training couldmake the Spaniards stand against us in the open field, but they wereheroes in Saragossa. The caprices of courage and cowardice areinnumerable. The French have no moral courage, they cannot standridicule, they cannot encounter disapprobation, they bow beforeoppression; a French soldier condemned by a court-martial cries for mercylike a child. The same man in battle appears indifferent to death. TheSpaniard runs away without shame, but submits to death when it isinevitable without terror. None of the prisoners taken on either side inthe Spanish civil war asked for pardon.'

'Indifference to life,' I said, 'and indifference to danger have littlein common. General Fenelon told me that in Algeria he had more than onceto preside at an execution. No Arab showed any fear. Once there were twomen, one of whom was to be flogged, the other to be shot. A mistake wasmade and they were going to shoot the wrong man. It was found out intime, but neither of the men seemed to care about it; yet theywould probably have run away in battle. The Chinese are not brave, butyou can hire a man to be beheaded in your place.'

'So,' said Ampere, 'you could always hire a substitute in our mostmurderous wars, when in the course of a year a regiment was killed twiceover. It was hiring a man, not indeed to be beheaded, but to be shot foryou.'

'The destructiveness,' said Beaumont, 'of a war is only gradually known.It is found out soonest in the villages when the deaths of the conscriptsare heard of, or are suspected from their never returning; but in thetowns, from which the substitutes chiefly come, it may be longundiscovered. Nothing is known but what is officially published, and theGovernment lies with an audacity which seems always to succeed. If itstated the loss of men in a battle at one half of the real number, peoplewould fancy that it ought to be doubled, and so come near to the truth;but it avows only one-tenth or only one-twentieth, and then the amount offalsehood is underestimated.'

'Marshal Randon,' I said, 'told me that the whole loss in the Italiancampaign was under 7,000 men.'

'That is a good instance,' said Beaumont. 'It certainly was 50,000,perhaps 70,000. But I am guilty of a _delit_ in saying so, and you willbe guilty of a _delit_ if you repeat what I have said. I remember thecase of a man in a barber's shop in Tours, to whom the barber said thatthe harvest was bad. He repeated the information, and was punished byfine and imprisonment for having spread _des nouvelles alarmantes_. Truthis no excuse; in fact it is an aggravation, for the truer the news themore alarming.'

'In time of peace,' I asked, 'what proportion of the conscripts returnafter their six years of service?'

'About three-quarters,' answered Beaumont.

'Then,' I said, 'as you take 100,000 conscripts every year even in peace,you lose 25,000 of your best young men every year?'

'Certainly,' said Beaumont.

'And are the 75,000 who return improved or deteriorated?' I asked.

'Improved,' said Ampere; 'they are _degourdis_, they are educated, theysubmit to authority, they know how to shift for themselves.'

'Deteriorated,' said Beaumont. 'A garrison life destroys the habits ofsteady industry, it impairs skill. The returned conscript is more viciousand less honest than the peasant who has not left his village.'

'And what was the loss,' I asked, 'in the late war?'

'At least twice as great,' said Beaumont, 'as it is in peace. Half ofthose who were taken perished. The country would not have borne theprolongation of the Crimean War.'

'These wars,' I said, 'were short and successful. A war with England canscarcely be short, and yet you think that he plans one?'

'I think,' said Beaumont, 'that he plans one, but only in the event ofhis encountering any serious difficulty at home. You must not infer fromthe magnitude of his naval expenditure that he expects one.

'You look at the expense of those preparations, and suppose that so greata sacrifice would not be made in order to meet an improbable emergency.But expense is no sacrifice to him. He likes it. He has the morbidtaste for it which some tyrants have had for blood, which his uncle hadfor war. Then he is incapable of counting. When he lived at Arenenburg heused to give every old soldier who visited him an order on Viellard histreasurer for money. In general the chest was empty. Viellard used toremonstrate but without effect. The day perhaps after his orders had beendishonoured he gave new ones.'

'Is it true,' I asked, 'that the civil list is a couple of years' incomein debt?'

I know nothing about it,' said Beaumont; 'in fact, nobody knows anythingabout anything, but it is highly probable. Everybody who asks foranything gets it, everybody is allowed to waste, everybody is allowed torob, every folly of the Empress is complied with. Fould raisedobjections, and was dismissed.

'She is said to have a room full of revolutionary relics: there is thebust of Marie Antoinette, the nose broken at one of the sacks of theTuileries. There is a picture of Simon beating Louis XVII. Her poor childhas been frightened by it, and she is always dwelling on the dangers ofher position.'

'So,' I said, 'did Queen Adelaide--William IV.'s Queen. From the passingof the Reform Bill she fully expected to die on the scaffold.'

'There is more reason,' he answered, 'for the Empress's fears.'

'Not,' I said, 'if she fears the scaffold. Judicial murder, at least inthat form, is out of fashion. Cayenne and Lambressa are your guillotines,and the Empress is safe from them.'

'But there are other modes of violent death,' he answered; 'from one ofwhich she escaped almost by miracle.'

'How did she behave,' I asked, 'at the _attentat?_'

'Little is known,' he answered, 'except that the Emperor said to her, ashe led her upstairs to her box: "Allons, il faut faire notre metier."'

'Then she is disturbed by religious fears. The little prince has beentaught to say to his father every morning: "Papa, ne faites pas de mal amon parrain." The Pope was his godfather.'

'If the Emperor dies, the real power will pass into the hands of PrinceNapoleon. And very dangerous hands they will be. He has more talent thanthe Emperor, and longer views. Louis Napoleon is a revolutionist fromselfishness. Prince Napoleon is selfish enough, but he has also passion.He detests everything that is venerable, everything that is establishedor legal.

'There is little value now for property or for law, though the Governmentprofesses to respect them. What, will it be when the Government professesto hate them?'

'If a Roman,' I asked, 'were an avowed infidel, would it take notice ofhim?'

'Probably not,' said Ampere, 'but his _cure_ might--not for hisinfidelity, but for his avowing it. The _cure_ who has always the powersof a _commissaire de police,_ might put him in prison if he went into a_cafe_ and publicly denied the Immaculate Conception, or if he neglectedgoing to church or to confession: but the Inquisition no longer caresabout opinions.'

'Is there much infidelity,' I asked, 'in Rome?'

'Much,' said Ampere, 'among the laity. The clergy do not activelydisbelieve. They go through their functions without ever seriouslyinquiring whether what they have to teach be true or false. No personswere more annoyed by the Mortara[1] business than the clergy, with theexception of Antonelli. He hates and fears the man who set it on foot,the Archbishop of Bologna, and therefore was glad to see him exposehimself, and lose all hope of the Secretaryship, but he took care toprevent the recurrence of such a scandal. He revived an old lawprohibiting Jews from keeping Christian nurses. But he could scarcelyorder restitution. According to the Church it would have been giving thechild to the Devil, and, what is worse, robbing God of him. The Pope'spiety is selfish. His great object is his own salvation. He would notendanger that, to confer any benefit upon, or to avert any evil fromRome; or indeed from the whole world. This makes him difficult tonegotiate with. If anything is proposed to him which his confessoraffirms to be dangerous to his soul, he listens to no arguments. As forMortara himself, he is a poor creature. A friend of mine went to see himin his convent. All that he could get from him was:

'"Sono venuti i Carabinieri."

'"And what did they do to you?"

'"M' hanno portato qui."

'"What more?"

'"M' hanno dato pasticci; erano molto buoni."

'What is most teasing,' continued Ampere, 'in the Roman Government is notso much its active oppression as its torpidity. It hates to act. AnEnglishman had with great difficulty obtained permission to light Romewith gas. He went to the Government in December, and told them thateverything was ready, and that the gas would be lighted on the 1st ofJanuary.

'"Could you not," they answered, "put it off till April?"

'"But it is in winter," he replied; "that it is wanted. Every thing isready. Why should we wait?"

'"It is a new thing," they replied; "people will be frightened. It mayhave consequences. At least put it off till March."

'"But they will be as much frightened in March," he replied.

'"If it must be done," they said, "as a kindness to His Holiness and tous put it off till February."

'There is, however, one sort of oppression which even we should find itdifficult to tolerate.

'A Monsignore has a young friend without money, but an excellent Catholicand an excellent politician, a fervid believer in the ImmaculateConception and in the excellence of the Papal Government. He wishes toreward such admirable opinions: but the Pope has little to give.Monsignore looks out for some young heiress, sends for her father,describes his pious and loyal _protege_, and proposes marriage. Herfather objects--says that his daughter cannot afford to marry a poor man,or that she does not wish to marry at all--or that he or she has someother preference.

'Monsignore insists. He assures the father that what he is proposing ismost favourable to the salvation of his daughter, that he suggests itprincipally for the benefit of her soul, and that the father's objectionsare inspired by the Evil One. The father breaks off the conversation andgoes home. He finds that his daughter has disappeared. He returns furiousto Monsignore, is received with the utmost politeness and is informedthat his daughter is perfectly safe under the protection of a cardinalwho himself did her the honour of fetching her in his gilded coach. "Youhave only," the Monsignore says, "to be reasonable, and she shall bereturned to you."

'The father flies to the cardinal.

'The same politeness and the same answer.

'"Do not oppose," he is told, "the will of the Pope, who, in this matter,seeks only your daughter's happiness here and hereafter. She is now withme. If you will give up your sinful obstinacy she shall be restored toyou to-day. If not, it will be our duty to place her in a convent, whereshe will be taken the utmost care of, but she will not leave it except tomarry the person whom His Holiness thinks most fitted to promote thewelfare of her soul."

'I have known several cases in which this attempt has been made. Withsuch timid slaves as the Roman nobility it always succeeds.'

[Footnote 1: The Jewish child who was taken away from his parents andconverted.--ED.]

_Thursday, August_ 15.--This is the fete of St. Louis--the great fete ofTocqueville. Madame de Tocqueville and Madame de Beaumont spent much ofthe morning in church.

Beaumont and his son walked to the coast to bathe. Minnie, Ampere, and Istrolled among the deep shady lanes of the plateau above the castle.Throughout Normandy the fields are small and are divided by moundsplanted with trees. The farmhouses, and even the cottages, are built ofprimitive rock, granite, or old red sandstone. At a distance, peeping outof the trees that surround them, they look pretty, but they, have morethan the usual French untidiness. The outhouses are roofless, thefarmyards are full of pools and dung heaps, which often extend into theroad; and the byroads themselves are quagmires when they do not consistof pointed stones. I was struck by the paucity of the children and theabsence of new houses. The population of Normandy is diminishing.

We conversed on the subject of Italy.

'If we are in Rome next winter,' I asked, 'shall we find the Frenchthere?'

'I think not,' said Ampere; 'I think that you will find only thePiedmontese.

'Every day that Louis Napoleon holds Rome is a day of danger to him, adanger slight perhaps now, but serious if the occupation be prolonged.The Anti-papal party, and it includes almost all that are liberal and allthat are energetic, are willing to give him time, but not an indefinitetime. They are quiet only because they trust him. He is a magician whohas sold himself to the Devil. The Devil is patient, but he will not becheated. The Carbonari will support Louis Napoleon as long as he is doingtheir work, and will allow him to do it in his own way and to take hisown time, as long as they believe he is doing it. But woe to him if theybelieve that he is deceiving them. I suspect that they are becomingimpatient, and I suspect too, that he is becoming impatient. This quarrelbetween Merode and Goyon is significative. I do not believe that Goyonused the words imputed to him. We shall probably keep Civita Vecchia, butwe shall give up Rome to the Piedmontese.'

'And will the Pope,' I asked, 'remain?'

'Not this Pope,' said Ampere, 'but his successor. Nor do I see the greatevil of the absence of the Pope from Rome. Popes have often been absentbefore, sometimes for long periods.'

'Most of my French friends,' I said, 'are opposed to Italian Unity asmischievous to France.'

'I do not believe,' he answered, 'in the submission of Naples to thisPiedmontese dynasty, but I shall be delighted to see all Italy north ofthe Neapolitan territory united.

'I do not think that we have anything to fear from the kingdom of Italy.It is as likely to be our friend as to be our enemy. But the Neapolitans,even if left to themselves, would not willingly give up theirindependence, and _Celui-ci_ is trying to prevent their doing so.'

'What do _they_ wish,' I asked, 'and what does _he_ wish?'

'I believe,' he answered, 'that _their_ wishes are only negative.

'They do not wish to recall the Bourbons, and they are resolved not tokeep the Piedmontese. _His_ wish I believe to be to put his cousin there.Prince Napoleon himself refused Tuscany. It is too small, but he wouldlike Naples, and Louis Napoleon would be glad to get rid of him. Whatwould England say?'

'If we believed,' I said, 'in the duration of a Bonaparte dynasty inFrance, we should, of course, object to the creation of one in Naples.But if, as we think it probable, the Bonapartists have to quit France, Ido not see few we should be injured by their occupying the throne ofNaples.

'I should object to them if I were a Neapolitan. All their instincts aredespotic, democratic, and revolutionary. But even they are better thanthe late king was. What chance have the Murats?'

'None,' said Ampere. 'They have spoiled their game, if they had a game,by their precipitation. The Emperor has disavowed them, the Neapolitansdo not care for them. The Prince de Leuchtenberg, grandson of EugeneBeauharnais, has been talked of. He is well connected, related to many ofthe reigning families of the Continent, and is said to be intelligent andwell educated.'

'If Naples,' I said, 'is to be detached from the kingdom of Italy, Sicilyought to be detached from Naples. There is quite as much mutualantipathy.'

'Would you like to take it?' he asked.

'Heaven forbid!' I answered. 'It would be another Corfu on a largerscale. The better we governed them, the more they would hate us. The onlychance for them is to have a king of their own.'

_August_ 15.--In the evening Ampere read to us a comedy called 'Beatrix,'by a writer of some reputation, and a member of the Institut.

It was very bad, full of exaggerated sentiments, forced situations, andthe cant of philanthropic despotism.

An actress visits the court of a German grand duke. He is absent. Hismother, the duchess, receives her as an equal. The second son falls inlove with her at first sight and wishes to marry her. She is inclined toconsent, when another duchy falls in, the elder duke resigns to hisbrother, he becomes king, presses their marriage, his mother does notoppose, and thereupon Beatrix makes a speech, orders her horses, anddrives off to act somewhere else.

Ampere reads admirably, but no excellence of reading could make suchabsurdities endurable. It was written for Ristori, who acted Beatrix inFrench with success.

_Friday, August_ 16.--We talked at breakfast of 1793.

'It is difficult,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'to believe that the Frenchof that day were our ancestors.'

'They resembled you,' I said, 'only in two things: in military courage,and in political cowardice.'

'They had,' she replied, 'perhaps more passive courage than we have.[1]My great-great-grandmother, my great-grandmother, and my great-aunt, wereguillotined on the same day. My great-great-grandmother was ninety yearsold. When interrogated, she begged them to speak loud, as she was deaf.'Ecrivez,' said Fouquier Tinville, 'que la citoyenne Noailles a conspiresourdement contre la Republique.' They were dragged to the Place de laRepublique in the same _tombereau_, and sat waiting their turn on thesame bench.

'My great-aunt was young and beautiful. The executioner, while fasteningher to the plank, had a rose in his mouth. The Abbe de Noailles, who wasbelow the scaffold, disguised, to give them, at the risk of his life, asign of benediction, was asked how they looked.

'"Comme si,' he said, 'elles allaient a la messe."'

'The habit,' said Ampere, 'of seeing people die produces indifferenceeven to one's own death. You see that among soldiers. You see it inepidemics. But this indifference, or, to use a more proper word, thisresignation, helped to prolong the Reign of Terror. If the victims hadresisted, if, like Madame du Barry, they had struggled with theexecutioner, it would have excited horror.'

'The cries of even a pig,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'make it disagreeableto kill it.'

'Sanson,' I said, 'long survived the Revolution; he made a fortune andlived in retirement at Versailles. A lady was run away with betweenVersailles and Paris. An elderly man, at considerable risk, stopped herhorse. She was very grateful, but could not get from him his name. Atlast she traced him, and found that it was Sanson.'

'Sanson,' said Beaumont, 'may have been an honest man. Whenever a placeof _bourreau_ is vacant, there are thirty or forty candidates, and theyalways produce certificates of their extraordinary kindness and humanity.It seems to be the post most coveted by men eminent for theirbenevolence.'

'How many have you?' I asked.

'Eighty-six,' he answered. 'One for each department.'

'And how many executions?'

'About one hundred a year in all France.'

'And what is the salary?'

'Perhaps a couple of thousand francs a year.'

'Really,' said Ampere, 'it is one of the best parts of the patronage ofthe Minister of the Interior. _M. le Bourreau_ gets more than a thousandfrancs for each operation.'

'We pay by the piece,' I said, 'and find one operator enough for allEngland.'

'A friend of mine,' said Beaumont, had a remarkably good Swiss servant.His education was far above his station, and we could not find what hadbeen his birth or his canton.

'Suddenly he became agitated and melancholy, and at last told my friendthat he must leave him, and why. His father was the hereditary _bourreau_of a Swiss canton. To the office was attached an estate, to be forfeitedif the office were refused. He had resolved to take neither, and, toavoid being solicited, had left his country and changed his name. But hisfamily had traced him, had informed him of his father's death, and hadimplored him to accept the succession. He was the only son, and hismother and sisters would be ruined, if he allowed it to pass to the nextin order of inheritance, a distant cousin. He had not been able topersist in his refusal.'

'The husband of an acquaintance of mine,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'usedto disappear for two or three hours every day. He would not tell her forwhat purpose. At last she found out that he was employed in the _chambrenoire_, the department of the police by which letters passing through thepost are opened. The duties were well paid, and she could not persuadehim to give them up. They were on uneasy terms, when an accident threw alist of all the names of the _employes_ in the _chambre noire_, into thehands of an opposition editor, who published them in his newspaper.

'She then separated from him.'

'If the Post-office,' I said, 'were not a Government monopoly, ifeveryone had a right to send his letters in the way that he liked best,there would be some excuse. But the State compels you, under severepenalties, to use its couriers, undertaking, not tacitly but expressly,to respect the secrecy of your correspondence, and then systematicallyviolates it.'

'I should have said,' answered Ampere, 'not expressly but tacitly.'

'No,' I replied; 'expressly. Guizot, when Minister for Foreign Affairs,proclaimed from the tribune, that in France the secrecy of correspondencewas, under all circumstances, inviolable. This has never been officiallycontradicted.

'The English Post-office enters into no such engagements. Any letters maybe legally opened, under an order from a Secretary of State.'

'I believe,' I answered, 'that their letters pass through the Governor'shands, and that he opens them, or not, at his discretion.'

'Among the tortures,' said Ampere, 'which Continental despots delight toinflict on their state prisoners the privation of correspondence is one.'

'In ordinary life,' I said, 'the educated endure inaction worse than theignorant. A coachman sits for hours on his box without feeling _ennui_.If his master had to sit quiet all that time, inside the carriage, hewould tear his hair from impatience.

'But the educated seem to tolerate the inactivity of imprisonment betterthan their inferiors. We find that our ordinary malefactors cannot enduresolitary imprisonment for more than a year--seldom indeed so long. TheItalian prisoners whom I have known, Zucchi, Borsieri, Poerio,Gonfalonieri, and Pellico, endured imprisonment lasting from ten toseventeen years without much injury to mind or body.'

'The spirit of Pellico,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'was broken. Whenreleased, he gave himself up to devotion and works of charity. Perhapsthe humility, resignation, and submission of his book made it stillmore mischievous to the Austrian Government. The reader's indignationagainst those who could so trample on so unresisting a victim becomesfierce.'

'If the Austrians,' I said, 'had been wise, they would have shot insteadof imprisoning them. Their deaths would have been forgotten--theirimprisonment has contributed much to the general odium which isdestroying the Austrian Empire.'

'It would have been wiser,' said Beaumont, 'but it would have been moremerciful, and therefore it was not done. But you talk of all these men assolitarily imprisoned. Some of them had companions.'

'Yes,' I said, 'but they complained that one permanent companion wasworse than solitude. Gonfalonieri said, that one could not be in the sameroom, with the same man, a year without hating him.

'One of the Neapolitan prisoners was chained for some time to a brigand.Afterwards the brigand was replaced by a gentleman. He complainedbitterly of the change.

'The brigand,' said Minnie, 'was his slave, the gentleman had a will ofhis own.'

'How did M. de La Fayette,'[2] I asked Madame de Beaumont, 'bear his fiveyears' imprisonment at Olmutz?'

'His health,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'was good, but the miseries of hiscountry and the sufferings of his wife made him very unhappy. When mygrandmother came to him, it was two days before she had strength to tellhim that all his and her family had perished. I was once at Olmutz, andsaw the one room which they had inhabited. It was damp and dark. Sheasked to be allowed to leave it for a time for better medical treatmentand change of air. It was granted only on the condition that she shouldnever return. She refused. The rheumatic attacks which the state of theprison had produced, continued and increased: she was hopelessly ill whenthey were released--and died soon afterwards. The sense of wrongaggravated their sufferings, for their imprisonment was a gross andwanton violation of all law, international and municipal. My grandfatherwas not an Austrian subject; he had committed no offence against Austria.She seized him simply because he was a liberal, because his principleshad made him the enemy of tyranny in America and in France; and becausehis birth and talents and reputation gave him influence. It was one ofthe brutal stupid acts of individual cruelty which characterise theAustrian despotism, and have done more to ruin it than a wideroppression--such a one, for instance, as ours, more mischievous, but moreintelligent,--would have done.'

'Freedom,' said Ampere, 'was offered to him on the mere condition of hisnot serving in the French army. At that time the Jacobins would haveguillotined him, the Royalists would have forced duel after duel on himtill they had killed him. It seemed impossible that he should ever beable to draw his sword for France. In fact he never _was_ able. Americaoffered him an asylum, honours, land, everything that could console anexile. But he refused to give up the chance, remote as it was, of beinguseful to his country, and remained a prisoner till he was delivered byNapoleon.'

'He firmly believed,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'that if the Royal Familywould have taken refuge with his army in 1791 he could have saved them,and probably the Monarchy. His army was then in his hands, a few monthsafter the Jacobins had corrupted it.'

'Two men,' said Ampere, 'Mirabeau and La Fayette, could have saved theMonarchy, and were anxious to do so. But neither the King nor the Queenwould trust them.

'Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette are among the historical personages whohave most influenced the destinies of the world. His dulness, torpidityand indecision, and her frivolity, narrow-minded prejudices andsuspiciousness, are among the causes of our present calamities. They areamong the causes of a state of things which has inflicted onus, and threatens to inflict on all Europe, the worst of allGovernments--democratic despotism. A Government in which two wills onlyprevail--that of the ignorant, envious, ambitious, aggressive multitude,and that of the despot who, whatever be his natural disposition, is soonturned, by the intoxication of flattery and of universal power, into acapricious, fantastic, selfish participator in the worst passions of theworst portion of his subjects.'

'Such a Government,' I said, 'may be called an anti-aristocracy. Itexcludes from power all those who are fit to exercise it.'

'The consequence,' said Beaumont, 'is, that the qualities which fit menfor power not being demanded, are not supplied. Our young men have nopolitical knowledge or public spirit. Those who have a taste for thesciences cultivated in the military schools enter the army. The restlearn nothing.'

'What do they do?' I asked.

'How they pass their time,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'is a puzzle to me.They do not read, they do not go into society--I believe that they smokeand play at dominos, and ride and bet at steeple-chases.

'Those who are on home service in the army are not much better. The timenot spent in the routine of their profession is sluggishly and viciouslywasted. Algeria has been a God-send to us. There our young men have realduties to perform, and real dangers to provide against and to encounter.My son, who left St. Cyr only eighteen months ago, is stationed atThebessa, 300 miles in the interior. He belongs to a _bureau arabe_,consisting of a captain, a lieutenant, and himself, and about fortyspahis. He has to act as a judge, as an engineer, to settle the frontierbetween the province of Constantine and Tunis--in short, to be one of asmall ruling aristocracy. This is the school which has furnished, and isfurnishing, our best generals and administrators.'

We talked of the interior of French families.

'The ties of relationship,' I said, 'seem to be stronger with you thanthey are with us. Cousinship with you is a strong bond, with us it is aweak one.'

'The habit of living together,' said Beaumont, 'has perhaps much to dowith the strength of our feelings of consanguinity. Our life ispatriarchal. Grandfather, father, and grandson are often under the sameroof. At the Grange[3] thirty of the family were sometimes assembled atdinner. With you, the sons go off, form separate establishments, seelittle of their parents, still less of their cousins, and becomecomparatively indifferent to them.'

'I remember,' I said, 'the case of an heir apparent of seventy; hisfather was ninety-five. One day the young man was very grumpy. They triedto find out what was the matter with him; at last he broke out,"Everybody's father dies except mine."'

'An acquaintance of mine,' said Beaumont, 'not a son, but a son-in-law,complained equally of the pertinacious longevity of his father-in-law."Je n'ai pas cru," he said, "en me mariant, que j'epousais la fille duPere Eternel." Your primogeniture,' he continued, 'must be a great sourceof unfilial feelings. The eldest son of one of your great families is inthe position of the heir apparent to a throne. His father's death is togive him suddenly rank, power, and wealth; and we know that royal heirsapparent are seldom affectionate sons. With us the fortunes are muchsmaller, they are equally divided, and the rank that descends to the sonis nothing.'

'What regulates,' I asked, 'the descent of titles?'

'It is ill regulated,' said Beaumont 'Titles are now of such little valuethat scarcely anyone troubles himself to lay down rules about them.

'In general, however, it is said, that all the sons of dukes and ofmarquises are counts. The sons of counts in some families all take thetitle of Count. There are, perhaps, thirty Beaumonts. Some callthemselves marquises, some counts, some barons. I am, I believe, the onlyone of the family who has assumed no title. Alexis de Tocqueville tooknone, but his elder brother, during his father's life, called himselfvicomte and his younger brother baron. Probably Alexis ought then to havecalled himself chevalier, and, on his father's death, baron. But, Irepeat, the matter is too unimportant to be subject to any settled rules.Ancient descent is, with us, of great value, of far more than it is withyou, but titles are worth nothing.'

[Footnote 1: This incident is described in a little book published lastyear, the _Memoirs of Madame de Montaign_.--ED.]

_Saturday, August_ 17.--We drove to the coast and ascended the lighthouseof Gatteville, 85 metres, or about 280 feet high. It stands in the middleof a coast fringed with frightful reefs, just enough under water tocreate no breakers, and a flat plain a couple of miles wide behind, sothat the coast is not seen till you come close to it. In spite of manylighthouses and buoys, wrecks are frequent. A mysterious one occurredlast February: the lighthouse watchman showed us the spot--a reef justbelow the lighthouse about two hundred yards from the shore.

It was at noon--there was a heavy sea, but not a gale. He saw a largeship steer full on the reef. She struck, fell over on one side till heryards were in the water, righted herself, fell over on the other, partedin the middle, and broke up. It did not take five minutes, but duringthose five minutes there was the appearance of a violent struggle onboard, and several shots were fired. From the papers which were washedashore it appeared that she was from New York, bound for Havre, with alarge cargo and eighty-seven passengers, principally returning emigrants.No passenger escaped, and only two of the crew: one was an Italianspeaking no French, from whom they could get nothing; the other was anEnglishman from Cardiff, speaking French, but almost obstinatelyuncommunicative. He said that he was below when the ship struck, that thecaptain had locked the passengers in the cabin, and that he knew nothingof the causes which had led the ship to go out of her course to run onthis rock.

The captain may have been drunk or mad. Or there may have been a mutinyon board, and those who got possession of the ship may have driven her onthe coast, supposing that they could beach her, and ignorant of theinterposed reefs, which, as I have said, are not betrayed by breakers.

Our informant accounted for the loss of all, except two persons, by theheavy sea, the sharp reefs, and the blows received by those who tried toswim from the floating cargo. The two who escaped were much bruised.

A man and woman were found tied to one another and tied to a spar. Theyseemed to have been killed by blows received from the rocks or from thefloating wreck.

In the evening Ampere read to us the 'Bourgeois Gentilhomme.' His readingis equal to any acting. It kept us all, for the first two acts, which arethe most comic, in one constant roar of laughter.

'The modern _nouveau riche,_ said Beaumont, 'has little resemblance to M.Jourdain. He talks of his horses and his carriages, builds a great hotel,and buys pictures. I have a neighbour of this kind; he drivesfour-in-hand over the bad roads of La Sarthe, visits with one carriageone day, and another the next. His jockey stands behind his cabriolet intop-boots, and his coachman wears a grand fur coat in summer. His ownclothes are always new, sometimes in the most accurate type of a groom,sometimes in that of a dandy. His talk is of steeple-chases.'

'And does he get on?' I asked.

'Not in the least,' answered Beaumont. 'In England a _nouveau riche_ canget into Parliament, or help somebody else to get in, and political powerlevels all distinctions. Here, wealth gives no power: nothing, indeed,but office gives power. The only great men in the provinces are the_prefet_, the _sous-prefet_, and the _maire_. The only great man in Parisis a minister or a general. Wealth, therefore, unless accompanied by thesocial talents, which those who have made their fortunes have seldom hadthe leisure or the opportunity to acquire, leads to nothing. The women,too, of the _parvenus_ always drag them down. They seem to acquirethe _tournure_ of society less easily than the men. Bastide, whenMinister, did pretty well, but his wife used to sign her invitations"Femme Bastide."

'Society,' he continued, 'under the Republic was animated. We had greatinterests to discuss, and strong feelings to express, but perhaps theexcitement was too great. People seemed to be almost ashamed to amuseor to be amused when the welfare of France, her glory or her degradation,her freedom or her slavery, were, as the event has proved, at stake.'

'I suppose,' I said to Ampere, 'that nothing has ever been better thanthe _salon_ of Madame Recamier?'

'We must distinguish,' said Ampere. 'As great painters have many manners,so Madame Recamier had many _salons_. When I first knew her, in 1820, herhabitual dinner-party consisted of her father, her husband, Ballanche,and myself. Both her father, M. Bernard, and her husband were agreeablemen. Ballanche was charming.'

'You believe,' I said, 'that Bernard was her father?' 'Certainly I do,'he replied. 'The suspicion that Recamier might be was founded chiefly onthe strangeness of their conjugal relations. To this, I oppose herapparent love for M. Bernard, and I explain Recamier's conduct by histastes. They were coarse, though he was a man of good manners. He neverspent his evenings at home. He went where he could find more license.

'Perhaps the most agreeable period was at that time of Chateaubriand'sreign when he had ceased to exact a _tete-a-tete_, and Ballanche and Iwere admitted at four o'clock. The most illustrious of the _partiecarree_ was Chateaubriand, the most amusing Ballanche. My merit was thatI was the youngest. Later in the evening Madame Mohl, Miss Clarke as shethen was, was a great resource. She is a charming mixture of Frenchvivacity and English originality, but I think that the French elementpredominates. Chateaubriand, always subject to _ennui_, delighted in her.He has adopted in his books some of the words which she coined. HerFrench is as original as the character of her mind, very good, but moreof the last than of the present century.'

'Facile a vivre?' I said. 'I thought that his vanity had been _difficileet exigeante?_'

'As a public man,' said Ampere, 'yes; and to a certain degree in generalsociety. But in intimate society, when he was no longer "posing," he wascharming. The charm, however, was rather intellectual than moral.

'I remember his reading to us a part of his memoirs, in which hedescribes his early attachment to an English girl, his separation fromher, and their meeting many years after when she asked his protection forher son. Miss Clarke was absorbed by the story. She wanted to know whatbecame of the young man, what Chateaubriand had been able to do for him.Chateaubriand could answer only in generals: that he had done all that hecould, that he had spoken to the Minister, and that he had no doubt thatthe young man got what he wanted. But it was evident that even if he hadreally attempted to do anything for the son of his old love, he hadtotally forgotten the result. I do not think that he was pleased at MissClarke's attention and sympathy being diverted from himself. Later stillin Madame Recamier's life, when she had become blind, and Chateaubrianddeaf, and Ballanche very infirm, the evenings were sad. I had to try toamuse persons who had become almost unamusable.'

'How did Madame de Chateaubriand,' I asked, 'take the devotion of herhusband to Madame Recamier?'

'Philosophically,' answered Ampere. 'He would not have spent with her thehours that he passed at the Abbaye au bois. She was glad, probably, toknow that they were not more dangerously employed.'

'Could I read Chateaubriand?' I asked.

'I doubt it,' said Ampere. 'His taste is not English.'

'I _have_ read,' I said, 'and liked, his narrative of the manner in whichhe forced on the Spanish war of 1822. I thought it well written.'

'It is, perhaps,' said Ampere, 'the best thing which he has written, asthe intervention to restore Ferdinand, which he effected in spite ofalmost everybody, was perhaps the most important passage in his politicallife.

'There is something revolting in an interference to crush the libertiesof a foreign nation. But the expedition tended to maintain the Bourbonson the French throne, and, according to Chateaubriand's ideas, it wasmore important to support the principle of legitimacy than that ofliberty. He expected, too, sillily enough, that Ferdinand would give aConstitution. It is certain, that, bad as the effects of that expeditionwere, Chateaubriand was always proud of it.'

'What has Ballanche written?' I asked.

'A dozen volumes,' he answered. 'Poetry, metaphysics, on all sorts ofsubjects, with pages of remarkable vigour and _finesse_, containing someof the best writing in the language, but too unequal and too desultory tobe worth going through.'

'How wonderfully extensive,' I said, 'is French literature! Here is avoluminous author, some of whose writings, you say, are among the best inthe French language, yet his name, at least as an author, is scarcelyknown. He shines only by reflected light, and will live only because heattached himself to a remarkable man and to a remarkable woman.'

'French literature,' said Ampere, 'is extensive, but yet inferior toyours. If I were forced to select a single literature and to read nothingelse, I would take the English. In one of the most important departments,the only one which cannot be re-produced by translation--poetry--youbeat us hollow. We are great only in the drama, and even there you areperhaps our superiors. We have no short poems comparable to the "Allegro"or to the "Penseroso," or to the "Country Churchyard."'

'Tocqueville,' I said, 'told me that he did not think that he couldnow read Lamartine.'

'Tocqueville,' said Ampere, 'could taste, like every man of genius, thevery finest poetry, but he was not a lover of poetry. He could not read ahundred bad lines and think himself repaid by finding mixed with them tengood ones.'

'Ingres,' said Beaumont, 'perhaps our greatest living painter, is one ofthe clever cultivated men who do not read. Somebody put the "Misanthrope"into his hands, "It is wonderfully clever," he said, when he returned it;"how odd it is that it should be so totally unknown."'

'Let us read it to-night,' I said.

'By all means,' said Madame de Tocqueville; 'though we know it by heartit will be new when read by M. Ampere.' Accordingly Ampere read it to usafter dinner.

'The tradition of the stage,' he said, 'is that Celimene was Moliere'swife.'

'She is made too young,' said Minnie. 'A girl of twenty has not her wit,or her knowledge of the world.'

'The change of a word,' said Ampere, 'in two or three places would alterthat. The feeblest characters are as usual the good ones. Philinte andEliante.

'Alceste is a grand mixture, perhaps the only one on the French stage, ofthe comic and the tragic; for in many of the scenes he rises far abovecomedy. His love is real impetuous passion. Talma delighted in playinghim.'

'The desert,' I said, 'into which he retires, was, I suppose, a distantcountry-house. Just such a place as Tocqueville.'

'As Tocqueville,' said Beaumont, 'fifty years ago, without roads, tendays' journey from Paris, and depending for society on Valognes.'

'As Tocqueville,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'when my mother-in-lawfirst married. She spent in it a month and could never be induced to seeit again.'

'Whom,' I asked, 'did Celimene marry?'

'Of course,' said Ampere, 'Alceste. Probably five years afterwards. Bythat time he must have got tired of his desert and she of her coquetry.'

'We know,' I said, 'that Moliere was always in love with his wife,notwithstanding her _legerete_. What makes me think the tradition thatCelimene was Mademoiselle[1] Moliere true, is that Moliere was certainlyin love with Celimene. She is made as engaging as possible, and her worstfaults do not rise above foibles. Her satire is good-natured. Arsinoe isher foil, introduced to show what real evil-speaking is.'

'All the women,' said Ampere, 'are in love with Alceste, and they careabout no one else. Celimene's satire of the others is scarcelygood-natured. It is clear, at least, that they did not think so.'

'If Celimene,' said Minnie, 'became Madame Alceste, he probably made herlife a burthen with his jealousy.'

'Of course he was jealous,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'for he wasviolently in love. There can scarcely be violent love without jealousy.'

'At least,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'till people are married.

'If a lover is cool enough to be without jealousy, he ought to pretendit.'

[Footnote 1: Under the _ancien regime_ even the married actresses werecalled Mademoiselle.--ED.]

_Sunday, August_ 18.--After breakfast when the ladies were gone tochurch, I talked over with Ampere and Beaumont Tocqueville's politicalcareer.

'Why,' I asked, 'did he refuse the support of M. Mole in 1835? Why wouldhe never take office under Louis Philippe? Why did he associate himselfwith the Gauche whom he despised, and oppose the Droit with whom hesympathised? Is the answer given by M. Guizot to a friend of mine whoasked a nearly similar question, "Parce qu'il voulait etre ou je suis,"the true one?'

'The answers to your first question,' said Beaumont, 'are two. In 1835Tocqueville was young and inexperienced. Like most young politicians, hethought that he ought to be an independent member, and to vote, on everyoccasion, according to his conscience, untrammelled by party connections.He afterwards found his mistake.

'And, secondly, if he had chosen to submit to a leader, it would not havebeen Mole.

'Mole represented a principle to which Guizot was then vehementlyopposed, though he was afterwards its incarnation--the subservience ofthe Ministry and of the Parliament to the King. In that house of 450members, there were 220 placemen; 200 were the slaves of the King. Theyreceived from him their orders; from time to time, in obedience to thoseorders, they even opposed his Ministers.

'This, however, seldom occurred, for the King contrived always to have adevoted majority in his Cabinet.

'It was this that drove the Duc de Broglie from the Government andprevented his ever resuming office.

'"I could not bear," he said to me, "to hear Sebastiani repeat, in everycouncil and on every occasion, 'Ce que le Roi vient de dire estparfaitement juste.'" The only Ministers that ventured to have an opinionof their own were those of the 12th of May 1839, of which Dufaure,Villemain, and Passy were members, and that of the 1st of March 1840, ofwhich Thiers was the leader; and Tocqueville supported them both.

'When Guizot, who had maintained the principle of Ministerial andParliamentary, in opposition to that of Monarchical Governments, withunequalled eloquence, vigour, and I may add violence, suddenly turnedround and became the most servile member of the King's servile majority,Tocqueville fell back into opposition.

'In general it is difficult to act with an opposition systematically and,at the same time, honestly. For the measures proposed by a Governmentare, for the most part, good. But, during the latter part of LouisPhilippe's reign, it was easy, for the Government proposed merely to donothing--either abroad or at home. I do not complain of the essence of M.Guizot's foreign policy, though there was a want of dignity in its forms.

'There was nothing useful to be done, and, under such circumstances, allaction would have been mischievous.

'But at home _every_ thing was to be done. Our code required to beamended, our commerce and our industry, and our agriculture required tobe freed, our municipal and commercial institutions were to be created,our taxation was to be revised, and, above all, our parliamentarysystem--under which, out of 36,000,000 of French, only 200,000 had votes,under which the Deputies bought a majority of the 200,000 electors, andthe King bought a majority of the 450 deputies--required absolutereconstruction.

'Louis Philippe would allow nothing to be done. If he could haveprevented it we should not have had a railroad. He would not allow themost important of all, that to Marseilles, to be finished. He would notallow our monstrous centralisation, or our monstrous protective system,to be touched. The owners of forests were permitted to deprive us ofcheap fuel, the owners of forges of cheap iron, the owners of factoriesof cheap clothing.

'In some of this stupid inaction Guizot supported him conscientiously,for, like Thiers, he is ignorant of the first principles of politicaleconomy, but he knows too much the philosophy of Government not to havefelt, on every other point, that the King was wrong.

'If he supposed that Tocqueville wished to be in his place, on theconditions on which he held office, he was utterly mistaken.

'Tocqueville was ambitious; he wished for power. So did I. We wouldgladly have been real Ministers, but nothing would have tempted us to bethe slaves of the _pensee immuable_, or to sit in a Cabinet in which wewere constantly out-voted, or to defend, as Guizot had to do in theChamber, conduct which we had disapproved in the Council.

'You ask why Tocqueville joined the Gauche whom he despised, against theDroit with whom he sympathised?

'He voted with the Gauche only where he thought their votes right. Wherehe thought them wrong, as, for instance, in all that respected Algeria,he left them. They would have abandoned the country, and, when that